"Principles are not aspirational"

Barry Lachapelle is the creator of cDox, a Canadian Google Docs alternative. His recent blog post about the "small tech" movement had me nodding along throughout.

He calls it a return to the original promise of technology, which I grew up seeing as a force for widespread good. Something we can use to become more expansive and interconnected, not more paranoid and withdrawn.

What can I say? It's a great read. Co-signed.

Here's what I highlighted:

Over the past few years, I have found myself paying closer attention to my own instincts while working in technology, especially inside large organizations. Nothing dramatic happened. The work was solid. The people were smart and well intentioned. But something felt increasingly misaligned. The direction of the work, the incentives behind it, and the outcomes it optimized for no longer matched my own principles.

Small Tech is not anti-technology. It is not anti-progress. If anything, it is about taking technology seriously enough to ask who it serves, who controls it, and who benefits when it succeeds.

For me, Small Tech means principle-driven software. Software where the values come first, and everything else follows from that. Community ownership. Clear data control. Accountability. Limits. Not as marketing copy, but as design constraints. In Small Tech, principles are not aspirational. They are non-negotiable.

Technology itself is not the problem. Tools are neutral. Incentives are not. When powerful tools are applied with care, humility, and respect for context, they can genuinely help people who are often overlooked by mainstream platforms.

Small Tech is not about staying small for the sake of it. It is about staying accountable.

The goal is not to teach people technology, but to make technology quietly useful in the context of daily work.

This is why conversations about AI so often miss the point. They swing between hype and fear. Either AI is the future of everything, or it is an existential threat. The reality, for me, is more grounded. AI lowers the barrier to building software. That leverage can be used to build bigger platforms, or it can be used to build smaller, more focused tools for real communities.

We will never sell your data. You control your data. You can leave. These are not features. They are constraints. They shape what the product can become, and just as importantly, what it will never become.

When we always default to the biggest platforms and the most popular frameworks, we concentrate power whether we mean to or not. Choosing smaller tools is one way to keep that ecosystem diverse and resilient.

None of this is free. There are trade offs. Things can be slower. Some services cost more. You do not get infinite scale handed to you. But those trade offs are the point. They force you to be intentional.